Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a coin operated vending apparatus for the cutting edge of our century in art of Computer Science. The present invention utilizes programmed computer chips, (hereafter CPU), micro processors, micro controllers, memory storage, their supporting components, and a handshaking incorporated modem. The CPU controlling system is structured designed and arranged in both soft and hardware functional operations, whereby it will store and selectively dispense a variety of products after appropriate amount of currency has been deposited in any one of its multi-coin is accepting devices that interfaces the CPU's programs of sequential logic operations, additionally the present invention will record and store all transaction data into its memory chips, for the interfaced, handshaking modem to access, retrieve and transmit, thus allowing present invention to interact with personal computers.
The computer art and modem technology in present inventions structured design adds a phenomenal convenience to owners and operators primarily in the vending industry, more particular to services, in combination with coin operated apparatuses structure, whereas present invention overcomes several disadvantages presently existing in vending machines commonly used in the marketplace today for dispensing food and non-food products. The present invention was originally conceived and designed with bread and bakery products in mind, however, it should be understood that the vending machine structure disclosed herein can be utilized in other allied fields, such as other foods and non-food products and the likes.
Heretofore vending machines used in the field of dispensing food products have been relatively expensive in the areas of manufacturing cost, servicing, and maintenance. Vending machines heretofore utilized for dispensing products have been relatively complicated by their heavy reliance on one coin controlling device and change unit, mechanical structure, and bulky mechanism, making them complex in structure, and causing complications in many areas of the machine, rendering it incapable of delivering a product, and serving its intended purpose, thereby causing aggravation to the user firstly, as a result of not obtaining a product which was desired, secondly there are no options for purchasing a product once the one coin in acceptor, and change unit dictating operations experiences a malfunction, when that one coin in acceptor, or change unit experiences a malfunction, the machine is shut down, the third grievance of prior art is to owners, when quarterly statements print out and his assets become liabilities when this condition occurs. Still another major disadvantage factor of prior art is the servicing and loading trips, the locations have to be physically visited to check out the status of the machine, even the latest technology of the computerized hand held interrogator, demands a service representative be on location to retrieve data from the machine, and transmit or download it at a later time. Owners at present have no way of long distance communications with their equipment, many times trips are made to locations as a routine check, to find that the machine is not in need of products or servicing, these physical trips consume many manpower hours, wear and tear on private and company vehicles, representing additional aggravation in areas of travel expenses and labor costs in manpower hours, for no sales, equals bank empty, however, gas for travel, and the employees have to be paid regardless.